I recently moved my laptop from a Gentoo Linux distribution to Ubuntu. This was mainly that the rebuild time was very slow and updating my laptop, with gentoo, would take hours if not days. I decided to move to a binary distribution and chose Ubuntu. There was no real reason I chose Ubuntu over any other though.

Most of the setup was easy, the only issue I found was that Ubuntu uses Alt-Middle Mouse to resize the windows. I have used xfce for years and I just couldn’t get used to this change in Ubuntu.

I did alot of searching and could not find out how to change it.

…. some hours later …

Well I finally managed to get Ubuntu to resize with Alt-Right Click (button3).

By default Ubuntu resizes with Alt-Middle Mouse Button, my laptop mouse has a very small middle mouse button. I use xfce on my other linux boxes and I wanted all the Window Managers to function the same.

I tried installing the CompizConfig Settings Manager. I then disabled the Window Menu which was using Alt-Button 3 and went to the resize window setting and made that Alt-Button3. This seemed to be ok, until I tested it. The Alt-Button 3 was still showing the Window Menu.

I tried disabling the Window Menu totally, but the settings simply wouldnt stay.

open ccsm, go to Preferences, and if gconf is selected as a back-end, then make sure that the checkbox “Enable integration into the desktop environment” is unchecked.
Now you change change the bindings.

I’m not 100% what the “Enable integration into the desktop environment” checkbox provides, but everything seems to work ok with this checkbox disabled.

This workaround only works when you have the visual affects no though. If you turn off the visual affect then compiz isnt controlling the right click any more and it goes straight back to opening the Window Menu.

I’m still trying to get the window manager to resize on right click without the visual effects being enabled. If anyone know, please let me know.